Posted by James Yum, Developer Programs Engineer (Google Desktop Team)We've released a new version of the Google Desktop SDK. This release adds sample gadgets for features introduced in 5.5, introduces a new page that describes all the samples, updates all the gadgets to have tags that indicate Mac compatibility, and includes a Gadget Designer that better supports the latest version of Google Desktop.

The new samples cover combobox, idealBoundingRect, and image manipulation using colorMultiply and cropMaintainAspect. Here's a snapshot of the image manipulation sample gadget:A new sample gadget directory page (api\samples\gadgets\Directory.html) describes every sample gadget and points to related links. Even if you're already familiar with the SDK, you might want to check out the directory — it'll give you a fresh look at the gadget samples. We've also reworked the folder hierarchy, moving advanced gadgets to a demos folder.

As far as Mac compatibility goes, we've added <platform> tags to all the manifest files (which you should already be doing). A few samples (such as EventAPI and DragDrop) rely on features that aren't supported on the Mac version. These gadgets are explicitly marked as incompatible using the tag. Also, the RSS Demo gadget does not currently work on the Mac; it will be updated to support the Mac in the near future. In general, most gadgets work on the Mac unless you break one of the guidelines in Writing a Cross-Platform Gadget.

In case you didn't know, the Mac gadget API is currently one version behind (equivalent to version 5.1). 5.5 features won't be implemented until the next Mac release. For full Mac compatibility, be careful when using 5.5 features such button.caption and <item>.